Harry Potter at the British Library

The British Library will be the busiest it has been since moving to its present location 20 years ago with the opening on 20 October of Harry Potter: A History of Magic. The exhibition, in the main PACCAR Gallery, will run to 28 February 2018.

Apparently the BL has already sold 32,000 tickets to the exhibition; the first 12 days are now booked out as are the next eight weekends. So if you want to see it, make plans now!

But if you go to see the world’s most famous young wizard, have a look beyond the exhibition. For example, if you visit the John Ritblat Gallery you can view up close everything from two of the four copies of the Magna Carta and the Codex Sinaiticus (earliest complete New Testament) to Lady Jane Gray’s Book of Prayers she held on the scaffold to Beatles’ lyrics written on the back of Lufthansa envelopes.